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Thomas Young and the Concept of Coherence of Light

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Thomas Young and the Concept of Coherence of Light
Read on April 16, 1982 at the meeting of the Midwest Junto
at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.

Two fundamental alternative theories of light were developed in the 17th century: the emission or
corpuscular theory and the wave theory. During the 18th century the emission theory came to
dominate over the wave theory, particularly in Britain and France. However, at the very
beginning of the 19th century Thomas Young attempted to revive the wave theory of light in the
article “The Theory of Light and Colors” by adding a new significant concept, the principle of
interference.
According to this principle, when two waves meet at some point being in the same phase,
their amplitudes add up and the intensity of light reaches its maximum, while if they are in the
opposite phases their amplitudes subtract, and the intensity of light is minimal. Though any two
when intersecting disturb one another’s motion, we can recognize this distortion only in some
cases. In these cases I will the phenomenon “interference” and the interfering waves, “coherent”
waves.
Young claimed that his principle of interference could account for all phenomena of the so-
called “periodical colors”: Newton’s rings, fringes surrounding shadows of bodies, halos around
the Sun and the Moon, and so on. Before Young, some of these phenomena had been explained
in the emission theory of light. [I would stress here that the term “interference phenomena”
became meaningful only after the establishment of the principle of interference, thus it makes no
sense to apply it to works of Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton as some scholars do.]
Although Young’s claim was basically correct, his principle was not adopted. Fifteen years
later, Augustin Fresnel rediscovered the principle of interference and successfully applied it to
the theory of diffraction of light. From that point on, this principle began to win recognition and
acceptance.
Explaining Young’s failure to establish the principle of interference and the wave theory of
light has been a persistent problem in the history of optics. Two distinct answers have been
offered. According to the older view originated by François Arago, William Whewell, and
George Peacock, Young’s theory and the principle of interference were presented well, and the
failure of its acceptance was due to external causes. Among them were Newton’s authority as a
staunch opponent of the wave theory, Henry Brougham’ severe criticism, and the obscurity of
Young’s style. In a more recent view, Young’s theory deserved its fate because of its many
flaws, including many gratuitous assumptions, an insufficient experimental support, and his
neglect of advanced mathematics.
Kenneth Latchford and John Worrall claim that Young’s principle of interference was nothing
more than the well known mechanical principle of superposition, merely applied to optics.
Worrall insists that Young had no clear idea of coherence, while Latchford’s history of the
principle of interference does not include this concept at all.
 I believe that neither of these extreme opinions is correct, and the response to Young’s theory
must be explained by a number of external and internal factors, the role of some of which, such
as the concept of coherence, has not been yet studied at all.
Today, I will examine what Young knew about coherence, how he presented it, and how this
presentation could have affected the response to his theory. Contrary to Latchford and Worrall, I
will argue that the concept of coherence played a prominent role in Young’s theory, and that the
principle of interference was his original discovery.
In my view, Latchford and Worrall are mistaken in identifying the principle of interference
with that of superposition. According to the latter principle, a motion of a mathematical point
which participates simultaneously in two independent motions may be presented as a sum of
these two motions. When two waves intersect many points experience such a compound motion,
and the principle of superposition alone cannot describe the behavior of waves on the whole. The
concept of coherence allows us to find a correlation between motions of different points.
Therefore, the principle of interference may be considered as a synthesis of the principle of
superposition and the concept of coherence.
Before Young, scientists had been much more concerned with the problem of independence
of intersecting waves than with their interaction and focused on proving that the state of waves
after an intersection was the same as before it. Young was the first to ask what actually happens
during the intersection. With this question a new concept – the principle of interference – was
born.
The concept of coherence is valid for any kind of waves. Young initially applied it to
mechanical waves, studying the interference of water waves and of sounds of different
frequencies which produces an effect known as “beats of sound”. Since this stage was for Young
a transitional one to his optical studies, I will focus here only on his work on optical coherence.
Young gave his first account of several conditions of coherence of light in 1801 in his
“Theory of Light”. His first condition was that light from different sources can interfere. This
erroneous statement obviously originated in his study of mechanical waves where it can be true.
The second condition was that only light of the same frequency can interfere. This meant that
red light can interfere with another red light but not with green light, etc. This condition is true,
and possibly it was also deduced from an acoustical analogy: when two rays of light of different
frequency intersect, optical “beats” do appear, but their intensity varies so rapidly that the eye
cannot follow it, registering only an average intensity of light. Thus, in this case interference is
not perceived.
The third condition was that both interfering rays must have almost the same direction. This
is also true, but the origin of this condition is unclear. There is a hint that at this time (1801)
Young was also aware of the fourth condition, namely, that the path difference of interfering rays
must be very small. In his “Lectures on Mechanical Philosophy” completed in 1805 and
published two years later, Young discussed this case more specifically, and even applied this
condition to other phenomena, however without explicitly formulating it.
In all his works between 1801 and 1805 Young always considered a single source of
interfering rays. Nonetheless, he had not yet abandoned the possibility of interference from two
sources, as one can see in his controversy with Brougham. Although Brougham’s reviews of
Young’s papers have acquired notoriety for their vituperative style, they do contain some serious
scientific criticism. As Brougham interpreted it in 1804, the essence of Young’s principle was
that,

we can always form colored fringes, by causing two beams of white light to interfere. In
other words, that, by doubling the quantity of light on any place, we can cover it with
colored fringes; or, which is the same thing, that colored fringes are nothing absolute, but a
mere relative idea, like size and intensity…This is evidently an absurdity.

It seems that Brougham considered Young’s principle as contradicting the fundamentals of

photometry: 1) two sources of light produce in a given point a greater illumination than each of
them alone; 2) the quantitative variation of the illumination does not produce a new quality.
Therefore, in Brougham's view, two beams of white light cannot produce colors.
In response to Brougham, Young insisted that two candles do produce colored fringes but
these fringes are too narrow to be seen. A few months later, however, a correct statement
appeared in the "Lectures" that two interfering rays must have the "same origin". We do not
know how this step was achieved , but it was a very important one. It is unlikely that Young
could justify his decision theoretically, for he could not have solved the problem of an extended
source. Since such a source can be presented as a system of luminous points, the assumption that
it produces fringes is equivalent to that of a possibility of interference from several sources.
Neither in the "Lectures" nor in other works did Young specify whether the source of light
must be a point or an extended body. All the diagrams in his papers from 1801 to 1803 show a
point source of light even when the observation was possible with an extended source, as, for
instance, in the case of Newton's rings. It seems that at that time he simply ignored the influence
of the size of the source. He held on the same strategy even later, as one can see from his
comments in the "Lectures" on Francesco Grimaldi’s two-hole experiment. Grimaldi let sunlight
enter a dark room through two small holes in a shutter and observed dark arches on a white
screen where two images of the sun intersected. He formulated a particular Proposition 22 that
one light added to another light sometimes makes a body more obscure. Since neither Grimaldi's
diagram nor his comment revealed any fringes, probably the very wording of the proposition
made Young to think that Grimaldi did observe interference of light.
In reality, Grimaldi's phenomenon had nothing to do with interference, later it was explained
by the effect of contrast. To see the fringes on a screen with the sun as a source, one needs to
place the two holes closer than 0.05 mm from one another, which certainly was not the case.
Young seemingly considered his own double-slit experiment as a repetition of that of Grimaldi,
and that is why he did not claim priority for it. His famous description of the experiment with
monochromatic light is rather a thought experiment than the actual one. However, Young did
attempt to perform this experiment with white light but missed the interference fringes in the
central white spot and observed only diffraction fringes produced by one slit. [See the post-1982
note ‘Young on Grimaldi’ attached here.]
Summarizing, Young possessed a considerable although incomplete understanding of the
concept of coherence: he knew four conditions, and he only failed to realize the role of the size
of the source.
 Unfortunately, Young did not pass his knowledge on to his readers. His strategy in presenting
the principle of interference was imperfect. Focusing on the explanation of the basic idea of the
principle and its applications, Young neglected to detail his exposition of the concept of
coherence. Only the condition of direction had been repeated in several works, while both the
condition of equal frequency and that of a single source of light were stated only once. The
condition of small path difference had never been explicitly formulated at all. In those cases
when Young did mention some conditions of coherence, he never attempted to justify them
theoretically. As the result, they might have appeared to readers as a set of empirical rules,
which could have hindered any attempt to apply the principle of interference to phenomena
Young did not discuss himself.
There is no evidence that by that time both the basic idea of interference and its application
even to diffraction of light were understood, while we know that his explanation of the
production of colored fringes was completely misunderstood. Young devoted little attention to
negative evidence, or those cases where the fringes were not visible although the conditions of
coherence appeared to be fulfilled. Only once did Young discuss a non-interference, by arguing
that in the case of large path difference colored fringes vanish due to overlapping at the same
point of many fringes of different colors.
His discussion of the non-interference of light from two candles was provoked by Brougham.
Brougham’s question was not unusual, it simply reflected daily experience. Indeed many rays
from the Sun come to the eye simultaneously after being reflected by various bodies, but we do
not see these bodies surrounded by colored fringes. The apparent inability of Young’s theory to
explain this well known phenomenon might have been partly responsible for a reserved attitude
to the principle of interference, which remained for some years neither rejected nor accepted.
Yet, it would be mistaken to suggest that the poor presentation of the concept of coherence was
the only reason for the miscomprehension of the principle of interference. Indeed, though
Fresnel’s account of this principle was more detailed and clear than Young’s, it took seven years
until another physicist applied it for the first time. This comparison suggests that there was an
inherent difficulty in comprehending the principle of interference which prevented its rapid
acceptance.

[Read about changes in Young’s discussion of coherence, including the double-slit

experiment, discovered by the author after 1982, in two excerpts attached here from his
book Kipnis, N(1991). History of the Principle of Interference of Light, Basel, etc:
Birkhäuser, pp. 118-124, 133-136.]
118 Chapter V
Indeed, it follows from eq. (5.31) that
7^=-^ = y> (5-35)
A,min4 -yo ^
and all fringes, except for the first one, yield wavelengths very close to the actual
one (within Young's measure of precision). Unfortunately, Young never pu-
blished his revised calculations of the wavelength.
Thus, by 1807 Young apparently had a satisfactory explanation of the external
fringes. Neither his initial omission of the phase change nor his subsequent cor-
rection of it have been previously recognized by historians, who have supposed
that Young had introduced this hypothesis right from the start just as Fresnel
did. It tnust be noted that Young's theory of diffraction was more mathematical
than physical: to determine the positions of fringes produced by interference, he
needed only two points which played the role of centers of spherical waves. He
found that for the internal fringes these centers were at the opposite edges of the
body, while for the external fringes they coincided with an edge and the lumi-
nous other than that source. He could not present any physical reason for this
choice other than that the hypothesis worked. Sometimes, this approach led
Young to physically impossible consequences. For instance, to produce fringes
within the shadow of a body. Young's inflected rays must pass through the body
itself
V.8 The two-slit experiment
Young described in his Lectures an observation which he considered to be the
simplest case of interference of light:
. . . a beam of homogeneous light falls on a screen in which there are two
very small holes or slits, which may be considered as centres of diver-
gence, from whence the light is diffracted in every direction. In this case,
when the two newly formed beams are received on a surface placed so as
to intercept them, their light is divided by dark stripes into portions
nearly equal, but becoming wider as the surface is more remote from the
apertures, so as to subtend very nearly equal angles from the apertures
at all distances, and wider also in the same proportion as the apertures
are closer to each other. The middle of the two portions is always light,
and the bright stripes on each side are at such distances, that the light.
 V.8 The two-slit experiment 119
coming to them from one of the apertures, must have passed through a
longer space than that which comes from the other, by an interval which
is equal to the breadth of one, two, three, or more of the supposed undu-
lations, while the intervening dark spaces correspond to a difference of
half a supposed undulation, of one and a half, of two and a half, or
more.*^
This classic experiment has traditionally been presented in physics textbooks as
having played an important role in the establishment of the wave theory of light.
Recently, however, Worrall has introduced a series of arguments to shov/ that
Young never performed the two-slit experiment: 1) Young never explicity
claimed to have done it; 2) he gave no numerical details; 3) he provided no de-
tails about the source of light and other conditions necessary to make this experi-
ment succeed; and 4) he mentioned two-slit interference only in his Lectures and
never again.*^
Although Worrall's arguments are valid, they do not necessarily lead to his
conclusion and may be explained differently. The lack of numerical and experi-
mental detail is typical for experiments described in the Lectures?'^ Young
tended to simplify his Lectures as much as possible, and for this purpose he eli-
minated most mathematical and technical details. He provided those who were
interested in such details with a mathematical Supplement and a large bibliogra-
phy. Therefore, the descriptions of experiments in the Lectures necessarily dif-
fered from those in his papers in the Philosophical Transactions. In the next chap-
ter I will answer Worrall's other two points. I support his contention that the
passage cited above describes a thought experiment rather than an actual one. In
my view, it would have been difficult for Young to prove experimentally that the
breadth of a fringe 5 is directly proportional to the distance b between the slits
and the observation screen and inversely proportional to the interval d between
the slits (see my Fig. 29). It is more likely that he referred to the following equa-
tion, derived theoretically:

(5 =/14, (5.36)

«2 Ibid., 464.
" Worral, "Thomas Young," 152-56.
'** Cantor has made this point in his "Historiography of'Georgian optics'," History of Science 16
(1978): 12, n. 19.
120 Chapter V
Fig. 29
The distribution of maxima and minima in the two-slit experiment: the dotted curve re-
presents the diffraction fringes while the solid line represents the interference fringes
where X is the wavelength.*' However, granting that this passage is nothing more
than a thought experiment, it does not mean that Young never actually per-
formed the two-slit experiment.
There is evidence that he, in fact, did make this observation. An analysis of
several paragraphs which follow his decription of two-slit interference in Lec-
ture X XXIX, "On the nature of light," reveals that Young was attempting to
found an explanation for a number of diffraction phenomena on his explanation
of two-slit interference.** According to Young, this experiment is the simplest
case of the interference of two rays, since two small holes can be considered to be
two centers of waves. Two slits may be treated as a number of pairs of luminous
centers which produce the same interference pattern as a single pair, but of a
greater intensity. In the following paragraphs Young shows how different cases
of diff raction may be reduced to the interference of light from two linear sources.
Young argues, for instance, that by removing a part of the screen on the outside
of the slits, a "narrow body" is obtained whose edges coincide with the former
See, lorinstance, D.HalHday, R.Resnick, Physics (New York: J.Wiley & Sons, 1978), 998.
Young, Lectures 1:465-67.
 v.8 The two-slit experiment 121
slits. In this way diffraction by a narrow body can be treated as the result of inter-
ference of rays coming from the opposite edges of the body.
To simplify references I will number all the paragraphs in Young's Lecture
XXXIX beginning with the "two-slit thought experiment" and give a brief de-
scription of them. Young's treatment of all phenomena is both theoretical and
experimental, though the details of observations are not provided. The subject of
the second and third paragraphs is not stated explicitly, and I will return to them
shortly. The fourth paragraph deals with the internal diffraction fringes pro-
duced by a narrow body; the fifth describes diffraction by a single parallel slit;
the sixth is devoted to diffraction by a striated surface; the seventh treats diffrac-
tion by a corner of a body; the eighth examines the external diffraction fringes;
and the next paragraphs deal wih the colors of thin plates, natural bodies, mixed
plates, supernumerary rainbows, and thick and double plates. It is clear from
this list that the two-slit experiment is missing, and, according to the logic of the
exposition, this experiment should be the subject of the second paragraph (or of
both the second and the third). I will now present the evidence to supj^ort my
conjecture.
The second paragraph states that.
The combination of two portions of white or mixed light, when viewed
at a great distance, exhibits a few white and black stripes, corresponding
to this interval; although, upon closer inspection, the distinct effect of
an infinite number of stripes of different breadths appear to be com-
pounded together, so as to produce a beautiful diversity of tints, jjassing
by degrees into each other. The central whiteness is first changed to a
yellowish, and then to a tawny colour, succeeded by crimson, and by
violet and blue, which together appear, when seen at a distance, as a
dark stripe; after this a green light appears, and the dark space beyond it
has crimson hue; the subsequent lights are all more or less green, the
dark spaces purple and reddish; and the red light appears so far to pre-
dominate in all these effects, that the red or purple stripes occupy nearly
the same place in the mixed fringes as if their light were received separ-
ately.«'
This description is too detailed for a thought experiment, and undoubtedly
Young saw these colors. However, it is unclear whether he used two sHts or just
one, because in both cases the colors (the "diffracton fringes") would have been
the same. The only unique feature of the two-slit phenomenon is a number of

Ibid., 465
122 Chapter V
equidistant narrow white and black "interference fringes" seen in the center of
the diffraction pattern. Since Young did not mention them, it would appear that
he was working with a single slit. However, his third paragraph refutes this
idea:
The comparison of the results of this theory with experiment fully esta-
blishes their general coincidence; it indicates, however, a slight correc-
tion in some of the measures, on account on some unknown cause, per-
haps connected with the intimate nature of diffraction, which uniformly
occasions the portions of light, proceeding in a direction very nearly
rectilinear, to be divided into stripes, formed by the light which is more
bent (Plate XXX, Fig.442,443).'**
There are two reasons to believe that Young is here speaking of the two-slit phen-
omenon. First, Fig.442, to which he refers (see Fig.30), shows two slits. Second,
Young did not have a theory for diffraction by a single slit. According to his idea
that external fringes are produced by the interference of direct and reflected
light, in this case he had to consider three rays, since both edges reflect light. In
Fig. 30
Young's diagram of his two-slit experiment displays the fringes as well as their loci (from
Lectures 1: Fig. 442)
Ibid.
 v.8 The two-slit experiment 123
the particular case of a central fringe the paths of the two reflected rays are the
same, and thus the problem can be reduced to two-ray interference. This is the
only case of diffraction by a slit that Young investigated. Therefore, the "theory"
mentioned by Young could have been only the theory of interference from two
luminous centers, expressed in eq. (5.36). According to this theory. Young ex-
pected to find equidistant fringes, while the experiment showed the central
fringe to be "a litte dilated" as compared to others: that is why Young decided
that the theory is valid and needs only a "slight correction."
Thus we have an apparent contradiction, for if the first and third paragraphs
refer to two slits, the second cannot deal with a single slit. This paradox can be
resolved if we assume that Young was working with two slits but for some reason
observed only a part of the complete interference pattern, namely the diffraction
fringes, while missing the interference fringes. Details on the colors obsen^ed
show that the fringes were vivid and quite broad. The easiest way to see such
fringes is by looking through the slits, held near the eye, at a distant source of
light (a candle flame, for instance, as in Fig. 31).'" To obtain bright fringes on a

Fig. 31
Direct method of observing fringes in the two-slit experiment

Ibid., plate XXX, Fig. 442 and the caption to it on p. 787. The second paragraph emphasizes a
predominance of reddish colors: such coloration is characteristic for diffraction fringes produced
by each slit separately; the interference fringes obtained in white light display more balance be-
tween reddish and bluish colors.
I used a candle flame not only as a source of light but also to make a double slit. After covering a
microscopic slide with soot, I drew with a razor blade two lines on the smoked surface, either
parallel or intersecting at a very small angle. Such double slits were tested at the Bakken M useum
by high school teachers and found easy to make and excellent for qualitative observations. With a
V-slit, described above, one simply cannot miss the interference fringes. This technique was avail-
able to Young, who also was familiar with the "direct" method of observing diffraction produced
by ahair, orthin fibers, or small particles.
124 Chapter V
white screen using sunlight he had to have a larger opening in the shutter than a
pinhole. Whatever method Young utilized, it appears that he missed the interfer-
ence fringes because his slits were too far from one another."
Thus Young did experiment with two slits, and he used both white and mon-
ochromatic light.'^ However he did not discover the interference fringes: he con-
fused them with diffraction fringes. Because the interval between the slits was
too large, he could see only diffraction fringes produced by each slit separately.
One of the obvious reasons for his mistake was the qualitative character of his
observation: if he had measured the distance between the observed fringes, he
would have immediately realized that they were of the wrong kind.
Section III: Young on coherence of light
Ernst Mach (1838-1916) believed that "Young evolved a practically complete
theory of the conditions for interference," while, in Worrall's view, "Young had
no clear ideas on what was later called coherence."'' Since both opinions are
based on a few selected passages from Young, the subject requires a more tho-
rough investigation.
As mentioned in 1.4, coherent wave must have: 1) equal frequency; 2) common
origin; 3) small angle between them; 4) small path difference; and 5) very small
light source (in some cases of diffraction). The first three conditions of coher-
ence can be found in Young's formulations of the principle of interference Y(l)
" For instance, by looking through a glass with two 0.1 mm slits at a candle flame, I saw the interfer-
ence fringes when the slits were 0.75 mm apart but did not see them when the distance between the
slits was 1.5 mm.
Young twice mentioned monochromatic light in relation to two-slit interference and showed
green maxima in his Fig.442 in the original edition of his Lectures. It is not clear how he monoch-
romatized light, for he applied a prism only to observe the whole spectrum (see Lectures 1:
Plate XXX, Fig. 443). It is not improbable, however, that he referred to monochromatic light only
to simplify his explanation of the theory of two-slit interference.
" See Mach, Principles of Optics, 153 (to Mach, "practically complete theory" meant the condition of
direction and the condition of common origin); Worrall, 154.
Young did not use any special term to designate the conditions that light must fulfill to produce an
interference phenomenon. It seems that Felix Billet was the first to use the terms "coherents ray-
ons" and "incoherence"; see his Traite d'optiquephysique 2 vols. (Paris, 1858), 1:63,444-5. Paul
Drude applied "Koharenz"; see his Lehrbuch der Optik (Leipzig, 1900), and also The Theory of
Optici, trans, from the German (New York, 1907), 134.
 V.13 The condition of the size of a light source 133
pression "two portions of the same pencil [Young's "pencil" means a beam of
light]" in Y(3) may contain it, for it implies that a single beam of light is split into
two parts which interfere. Another expression " t w o . . . portions of light... have
been separated and coincide again" from Y(6) has the same meaning and seems
to be even closer to the modem view: a wave is split in two parts, which combine
after traveling unequal distances. Young's insistence on interfering rays passing
different routes also points out to their common origin, for if the rays come from
two points, the difference of their routes is secured automatically.
We may now assert that the differences in Young's formulations do not neces-
sarily reflect changing views. Sometimes, he uses different terms to describe the
same idea. For instance, the expressions "same light" in Y(2) and "same pencil"
in Y(3) belong to the same period (late 1801) and thus should have the same
meaning. Another example: when Young reprinted his optical articles in his Lec-
tures with some revisions, none of the revisions affected the principle of interfer-
ence."" As a result, we see several apparently inconsistent formulations Y(l)
through Y(5) published at the same time! Certainly, Young did not think they
contradicted one another, which means that he changed the words but not the
ideas. It seems Young simply was not concerned with rigorous formulations, and
this lack of care should not be the reason for attributing to him the views which
he never held.

V.13 The condition of the size of a light source

Let us now see what kinds of problems Young encountered when he substituted
a luminous point for a real light source. Diffraction evidently does not create any
difficulty, since a very small secondary source employed in observations of this
sort (a very small aperture, or the focus of a lens collecting sunlight) may be con-
sidered a good approximation to a point. The situation is not so simple with ob-
servations of the colors of thin films where a broad source of light (the blue sky or
white clouds) is usually applied. Fortunately, in this case all light rays coming to
the plate from the same direction contribute to the formation of the same fringe.
Therefore, in order to determine the location of this fringe, the source may be
replaced by a single point. However, the problem becomes more difficult when it
is necessary to take into consideration the rays traveling from different points of
the source in different directions. In this case, according to the modem ap-
'O" Young, Lectures, 2:531-54,613-31,633-38,639^8.
134 Chapter V
proach, each point of the source is considered to produce its own system of
fringes. An overlap of different systems reduces the visibility of fringes, and the
bigger the angular size of the source the greater the effect. Let us see whether
Young was aware of such an approach.
As mentioned above, in all his early papers Young applied the approximation
of a point source even when he actually used the whole disc of the sun or a can-
dle's flame. Since this approximation showed satisfactory agreement with obser-
vations, he simply ignored the dimensions of luminous bodies. He was able,
though, if he needed it, to take these dimensions into consideration. This is seen
in his discussion of the two-candle flame interference in his reply to Brougham,
where he mentioned the "length" and "breadth" of the fringes. With two point
sources the loci of the maxima are a pair of hyperboloids. In fact, we see a very
small part of this surface, only where it intersects the retina. If the two sources are
linear, different pairs of their points produce images at different parts of the re-
tina. Finally, we obtain a fringe - the image of the source of light - whose length
is proportional to the length of the source. Therefore, when speaking of the
fringes' length. Young took into consideration the length of the flame. It would
be natural to suppose that he also considered the breadth of the flame, but we
have no evidence of it. However, even if Young considered the dimensions of two
bodies when discussing interference of rays coming from different bodies, he did
not do this when the luminous centers belonged to the same body, as shown in
his discussion of an experiment by Grimaldi.
Cirimaldi let sunlight enter a dark room through two small holes in a shutter
and observed dark arcs where the two images of the sun intersected on a white
screen (Fig. 32). He concluded from this that when one light is added to another
light, darkness is sometimes produced."" This remark has led many authors to
attribute to Grimaldi the first observation of interference in the two-aperture
experiment. In fact, Grimaldi's diagram shows no trace of hyperbolical fringes,
which must be present if the two holes were coherent sources of light. Emile Ver-
Fig. 32
Grimaldi's illustration of his two-hole experiment (from his De lumine)
Grimaldi, De lumine, 187. See also this section translated in Ann. de Chim. 10 (1819): 306-12.
G rimaldi emphasized that the two holes must be sufficiently distant from one another (p.306).
 v.13 The condition of the size of a light source 135
det (1824-1866) calculated that the two holes in Grimaldi's observation could be
treated as coherent sources only if they were distant less than 0.05 mm, which
obviously was not the case.'" He believed that Grimaldi's experiment did not
involve interference and could be explained by the effect of contrast."^ He de-
monstrated (see VIII.7) that two apertures at the distance d from one another
would be coherent secondary sources if the angular diameter of the luminous
body does not exceed
A
«'=7' (5.38)
where %. is the wavelength, and (p is the angular diameter. To make interference
from two slits possible, Verdet concluded. Young had to reduce the angular size
of the sun's disc by using a narrow diaphragm between the sun and slits or by
collecting sunlight at the focus of a lens, which becomes the secondary source."^
Following Verdet, many authors have also attributed the use of the additional
diaphragm to Young. However, if Young applied direct method of observation
(see V.8), he could do without a diaphragm and obtain fringes even when using
such a luminous source as the whole solar disc.""
If, as I have suggested, he confused interference fringes with diffraction
fringes, he could have concluded that the visibility of fringes does not depend on
the angular size of the source, since diffraction fringes could be obtained with
extended sources of light. Whatever the reason. Young believed in the indepen-
dence of the visibility of fringes of the size of a luminous source. Indeed, in his
Lecture XL "On the history of optics" Young says that.
He [Grimaldi] had even observed that in some instances the light of one
pencil tended to extinguish that of another, but he had not inquired in
what cases and according to what laws such an interference must be ex-
pected.
Thus Young did not see any essential difference between Grimaldi's experiment
and his own, which proves that he did not reaHze the role of a light source's size.
He evidently considered his two-slit experiment to be a simple modification of
Grimaldi's with holes replaced by slits; and it is possible that Young borrowed
''' Verdet, Lefons 1:106. Also see his "Introduction" to the Oeuvres de Fresnel 1: XXI.
" 2 Verdet, iefoni 1:52-53.
I " Ibid.
"'' I observed interferences fringes by looking at the solar disc at sunrise through two slits spaced by
0.35 mm.
Young, Lectures 1:476, italics added.
136 Chapter V
the very idea of his observation from Grimaldi, whose book he quoted in 1803.
This could explain why Young presented the two-slit experiment in such a mod-
est way and did not claim priority for it.
V.14 Summary
In 1801, Young already knew that the conditions of frequency, direction, path
difference, and common origin are both necessary and sufficient. Although he
knew that light from different origins cannot interfere, he could not explain it
properly. Nor did he solve the problem of the size of a luminous body. Thus,
Young possessed a considerable understanding of the concept of coherence, and
except for Grimaldi's two-hole experiment, he always applied it correctly. Un-
fortunately, Young did not pass his knowledge of coherence on to his readers,
since his presentation of this concept was neither lucid nor complete. Some of
the conditions of coherence were stated repeatedly, while others were mentioned
seldom or never. Since none of his works contained the complete set of condi-
tions, a reader would have had to know all of Young's optical works. The lack of
explanation could have produced various difficulties in grasping both theoreti-
cal and experimental problems. For instance, readers might have pondered in
vain why rays from different points of the same body do not interfere. Young did
not provide them with a method for determining whether a particular plate was
sufficiently thin, a fiber sufficiently narrow, or two slits close enough to observe
fringes; and this could have prevented them from repeating Young's observa-
tions and designing new experiments on interference of light.
Thus by 1801 Young's theory of interference was quite complete, for it con-
tained all the principal hypotheses, including the phase inversion. For every new
phenomenon, however, he had to find its specific pair of interfering rays. Most
applications of his theory were quantitative, although in some cases the theory
could not have been fully verified due to experimental difficulties. Young was
the first after Newton to have undertaken a systematic quantitative study of peri-
odical colors. He may be called one of the pioneers of the mathematization of
physical optics in the nineteenth century.
Young was an inventive and careful experimenter, although he was concerned
with an experiment only insofar as he needed it to demonstrate his theory. When
he uncovered a significant discrepancy between the theory and phenomena, he
worked to improve their agreement, mostly by changing some part of his theory,
for instance, by introducing phase inversion. But he never doubted the principle
of interference. His mathematical derivations were accurate, though his equa-
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